Mission 4
Links Full Mission can be read in 'bookform' here Teams Team A * Milno Enedrasi * Lukas Stark * Neil Slenom * Faith Valentine * Cog Anrizkalur Team B * Thomas Harrison * May * Nekarios Aurea-Inanis "Nick" * Nikitian Greiss "Nik" * Empyrea Cymac Mission Summary Briefing Welcome to China-9, one of the original 47 colony planets from when Earth Prime was still the center of humanity. It's old. Very old. The planet's local civilization has collapsed several times during its existence, and pretty much everything is built on top of the ruins of the past. It hasn't quite gotten to the level of some silent worlds, but there was a lot that had been long since lost. One of these ruins is our target of interest, but there were several issues, but only one of them is particularly relevant to how this mission went: The target was at the bottom of an artificial lake caused by a nearby dam. Due to some nearby anti-air, two teams were deployed to the site: one to recover the artifact, one to take out the AA. A few NPC teams were also deployed, but did not survive the landing. An Auspicious Start The mission started with the destruction of Team B's drop pod, which started Team B's day of right with massive amounts of limb loss and immediately disabling 2 of the teams 5 members. Team A landed intact and started moving slowly through the building while Team B regrouped on top of the dam and patched up their wounded. After moving around to the edge of the dam, Nekarios started walking down the side of the dam with a Doctor modification. About halfway down the dam, he gets spotted and reaches for his manipulator... The China-9 Incident The beginning of the end of this mission. Nekarious attempted to heat up a massive area at the base of the damn. As he works on the calculation, he starts to get more and more fatigued by the effort, until eventually he just starts banging at the keyboard. As he finally smashes the execute command, the manipulator starts screeching out various alarms until it crushes itself and turns into a small sun. This very quickly ends Nekarios's life in fire as the ball expands and begins to consume the dam. Everyone else on the dam scrambles for cover as the sun grows, while the people in the structure evacuate... mostly. Neil decides to try and ride the explosion out inside the building. When the sun finally explodes, releasing the lake water, he is crushed into paste sometime during the 200 mile trip down river. All that remains is 2 ponds of slightly stained metal and a gold filling. Back on the dam, Thomas and Nik get thrown up into the air by the explosion. Thomas comes down hard, shattering his pelvis and spine, while Nik lands head first, shattering his brain. Recovery The debris that followed did fairly limited damage, which meant all that was left was to patch up and clear out. The entire building the vault was in had been removed with the water, allowing the team to just walk up and collect the artifact from the vault with no further resistance. CasualtiesCategory:Mission I can't wait to fill out this section. *Thomas's hand, spine, and organs *May's legs and left arm *Nekarious Aurea-Inanis (Consumed by a giant fireball) *Nikitian Greiss (Head crushed like a cadbury egg) *Neil Slenom (Turned into a quaint metal beetle with a gold filling cut in half for eyes) *Faith's guts *Cog's everything (attempted to mate with a chunk of supercrete) Mysteries The only particular mystery here is the artifact itself, a small black cube of truly ridiculous destructive power. Steve said when they started that they would destroy it from orbit rather than allow it fall into rebel hands. Well, that was only partially true. The orbital bombardment wouldn't have destroyed the artifact, only its containment. Without that, the artifact would quickly destroy this solar system. It is revealed much later, after the takeover of the factory world Hephaestus, that this artifact is actually part of the raw materials for amps and manipulators.